Calories cycling

We aren’t done with the topic “How to Build Your Own Customized Diet Plan”. What else do you need to know? Calorie cycling! This is something without which natural bodybuilders have problems staying in good shape. Why? Because we still have to eat a little bit more (when in a positive calorie balance) in an off-season and we want to gain lean muscle mass. We also cycle when dieting down to keep the metabolism from plunging.

What can happen to you if you don’t cycle the calories? One of two things:

1. If in an off-season you have pretty good chance to gain a good layer of fat along with the new muscle tissue if not only fat. Or:
2. You won’t eat enough calories to initiate any growth at all. Or:
3. If dieting down your metabolism will adjust to the lesser amount of calories and the increased calorie expenditure by switching to a slow burning mode. At that point you can further increase the expenditure to keep shedding fat but you will be losing twice as much muscle tissue. And at the end you will still have some fat left, no energy left at all and not too much muscle left either.

I was sure you don’t like any of these scenarios, so keep reading.

But why is this Important especially in the sport of natural bodybuilding? Good question.

Because we, natural bodybuilders don’t rely on any chemical substances to build our bodies even on a lower calorie diet and a lot of cardio in an off-season the way non-natural athletes do (which is not actually a real muscle growth. It’s rather pure water retention). We have to hard earn our muscles based only on food and proper exercise.

How do you cycle? Simple. There aren’t a set number of days that you have to go high on Cals and then low. But there is a rule that you have to conform to. The sum of the calories in all days from a given cycle divided by the number of days in the cycle should equal what you’ve got as a result from following the previous steps.

I’ll explain. Let’s say you’ve decided to go 1 higher day and 3 lower. In your results from the previous steps you’ve arrived at the number of 2,500, which means you need that much Calories in order to continue to move successfully towards your goal.

1 + 3 = 4 (I know you are not an idiot, but I have to lay it this way so others!;-) will know what I’m doing and where these numbers come from)

2,500 x 4 = 10,000 Cal for the 4 days total

Day one you will have 2,800 Cal, and days 2, 3 and 4 you will have 2400.

2,800 + (3 x 2,400) = 10,000

It’s not hard, right. It’s actually really easy once you get over that fear of seeing so many numbers and doing so many calculations…

What other schemes for cycling? Here:

You can do 1 high + 2 low + 1 even lower.

Or:

2 high + 5 low… and so forth.

I always like to keep the difference in calories between high and low days at least 300 – 400 Cal. You can do 500 very successfully.

Oh, one more thing. I almost forgot… Start with the high calorie days so that before your next high calorie day you will have started to get calorie depleted.

And one last thing. I promise after this one I will let you go. I’ll hate to keep you here forever.

You can cycle pretty much everything – carbs, proteins, fats. But you MUST at least cycle the carbs. That’s absolute must!!!

There is one more post that I have to make before I can say “I’ve finished this topic”.

Soon;-)